Showing posts with label hypocrisy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hypocrisy. Show all posts

21 March 2022

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Leaven of the Pharisees - Keeping Up Appearances

 

“Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.

In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative.  It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. 

Thus I have come to think that the commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses, along with anxiety and violence.

The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath."

Walter Brueggemann

 

"They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control.  They will be cruel and hate what is good.  They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.  They will act religious, but they will refuse the grace that could make them righteous." 

2 Timothy 3:3-5

 

"Then he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'" 

Mark 2:27 


"Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

Luke 12:1

 

Hypocrisy is from the Greek and means acting, or playing a part.

Often people become unbalanced in their priorities, taking something which may be good to an extreme that makes it highly counterproductive for others and themselves.

Ideology often makes people into hypocrites, because they lose sight of the why of things and become obsessed with the what and the how

This is why I have shown the chart at the very bottom of this posting that shows a convergence of the far right and the far left, in their disordered sense of priorities.

Bruggerman makes these points about the Sabbath, and to its reason for being, which is our awareness and growth in the love of God above all else.   

This is why our Lord himself said, 'The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'  The Sabbath is for our benefit.

If we take a strict adherence to the law, and lose sight for its reason for being, we can fall into the trap of legalism and hypocrisy.

Many of God laws are primarily for our own growth and development, not because God requires it for Himself, or His justice demands it.     He does not need our suffering, or our denial of things, or other sacrifices.   He does not desire sacrifice for its own sake, but mercy.

The person who becomes obsessed with legalisms loses sight of the reason for these things, and is like the servant who buried their talent in strict observance to what they perceive as a harsh and unreasonable master, and fail to accomplish the purpose of their task, which is to be fruitful in His creation through our actions.

Strict observance without love is an attractive error, because it allows us to believe that we are the best in observing and obeying God, even while we worship something else with our hearts.  It is a mask of self-delusion.

And such rigid and harsh thinking is like leaven, it spreads and permeates the whole.

This is why so often we see the harshest and least loving people wearing the mask of perfect ideologist of both the right and the left.  

They think 'yes I can hate, because I love God or my political party or economic theory just that much.  And so I can negate the other, reduce them to cartoons, and feel very superior to them and their failings.'

And this deadening of self conscience permits even otherwise ordinary people to become part of unspeakable actions and horrors. 

The banality of evil is to think that 'I am just a player of a part, an actor, serving a greater power.'

As old as Babylon, and self-deceivingly evil as sin.

Stocks took a dive in the earlier trading, but managed to come back to unchanged in the quiet trading of the afternoon.

Chairman Powell made some hawkish seeming noises today, which helped to take stocks to their lows. 

Gold and silver rallied after the quad witching option expiration of last Friday.

The VIX continued to fall, to a level that seems low in the short term.

Although it fluctuated in a choppy trade, the Dollar managed to go out near the day highs in the mid 98 level.

Geopolitical events will continue to add uncertainty and risk to the market.

As with the economy and money, things may not be what they seem.

Have a pleasant evening.


 

 

 

 

12 October 2012

A Vignette of the US Political Scene



I did not watch the VP Debate in the US elections.

Someone sent me this video clip because it illustrates the principle which I have mentioned that is very much in play amongst the hypocrites that "money that comes to me and mine is for growth and to create jobs but money for anyone else is handouts and mooching."

Ayn Rand descried social programs and help for the unfortunate as 'handouts,' and glorified rule by the fittest and the fortunate all her life.

But when she needed it she gratefully took the same Social Security and Medicare that was so pernicious to society.

And the point is, did she learn from this? Did she change her mind or say she was sorry for being so wrong, so unfeeling, so willfully ignorant of the vagaries of life?

No not one bit. And that is the mindset of a sociopath. Not that she took what she was entitled to because of the efforts of others to create a safety net. No, but because she would still denounce and deny that same 'insurance' against misfortune to others, while taking it for herself.

Or I could mention a person I know who likes to rail against any government efforts to help the disabled and the poor, even today. He finds it highly offensive.

And yet this same person directly participated in making millions from the aid and the bailouts of the US auto industry, and would have faced a grave personal loss himself if the government had not prevented its bankruptcy. He acts as though this was all his doing, his superior performance, and is now entitled to -- everything and then some.

And the financiers of Wall Street are even worse.

Politics is the art of hypocrisy. And some of the fortunate ones and their minions and stooges raise it to a high art indeed. They are shameless as well as heartless.




21 September 2012

Jon Stewart: Chaos On Bullshit Mountain



Out of the mouths of comedians...


The Daily Show with Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Chaos on Bulls**t Mountain - The Entitlement Society
www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogThe Daily Show on Facebook

What kind of a people could delight in machine-gunning the lifeboats of those who are attempting to escape, not to thrive but to merely survive, the mayhem and chaos that these same sociopaths have created through their selfish and criminal actions? And what sort of gullible fools will listen to them, and assist them in their work even if passively by saying nothing?
"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.

What is called 'fellow traveling' (collaboration) was primarily business interest: one pursues one’s own advantage before all else and, simply not to endanger oneself, does not talk too much. That is a general law of the status quo."

Theodor Adorno
Have we truly learned nothing? Must we make the same mistakes over and over again?

These 49 percent include for the most part the elderly, students, the working poor, soldiers and their families, and the disabled.

These 'handouts' include Social Security and unemployment insurance which people have paid for when times were good. The ranks of the working poor have swelled for sure, because of a financial collapse brought on by unfettered greed and fraud of Wall Street, and a stagnant real median wage for the past 20 years in the face of rising costs, often driven by monopolies, fraud, and cartels.

A kleptocracy is sucking the life out of working men and women by force and fraud. A group of sociopaths, who have committed one of the great crimes in history, not only blithely walk away with their loot unpunished, but come back to rob their victims once again, to finish the job. And they gorge themselves on the public trust even while begrudging the widow her pittance, or trying to steal it.

They pervert and corrupt so many, filling their hearts with their passionate lies, appealing to what is the very worst in them. They are truly a den of vipers and thieves.

You can believe what you will, but you will be held responsible for your beliefs, and your actions, what you do and do not do.

And finally, it takes a comedian to stand up and say it. "Shame."


Source: Reuters


28 August 2012

Neoliberalism: Rise of the Machine


Miranda: O brave new world that has such people in it!

Prospero: 'Tis new, to thee.

The Tempest Act 5, scene 1

In my reading today I came across this relatively good description of Neoliberalism in economics excerpted below, and its implications for society.  The name for this school is often confusing to some, because it is a school of the right, more akin to political neoconservatism than anything commonly known as liberal.

Here is the schoolbook definition of neoliberalism in economics:
"Neoliberalism is a label for economic liberalizations, free trade, and open markets. Neoliberalism supports privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation of markets, and promotion of the private sector's role in society. In the 1980s, much of neoliberal theory was incorporated into mainstream economics."
I have to reiterate my own perspective that economics is not a physical science with rules generally tested by replicable experimentation on the macro level, but is at most a 'social science' that attempts to approximate a complex human reality, like sociology.

Microeconomics 'works' because it is less dependent on the human element, and involves itself with mechanical processes and pricing functions. By 'economics' I am discussing what is called macroeconomics, or the economics not of a discreet process or set of processes called a 'business' but of a broad economy with enormous sets of variables and processes that are far too complex to represent well mathematically.  They most often trim and crush reality to fit some compactly useful model, as in the manner of Nassim Taleb's Procrustean Bed.

When it ventures into the realm of public policy discussions, economics often resembles a belief system very much like a religion.   It is easily twisted to serve the desires and actions of its acolytes while conferring an aura of logic.  But there is almost always some 'leap of faith' made that spans the enormous gulf between the model, its assumptions, and reality.

Economics is only as good as its assumptions, which may in fact be terribly distorted with each step towards a more general application from a simple a priori observation that sounds self-evident at first.  Economics is a veritable cornucopia of non sequiturs encased in obscurantist terminology.

People are reasoning, therefore in their actions they act reasonably. And in the mass of financial transactions that is the market, these rational actors and their actions impute a natural rationality to the market that makes it efficient. Therefore the law of supply and demand and the perfect clearing price of the market, which are central tenets of market efficiency, are not to be interfered with by outside forces, like regulation and government.

And what makes this believable is that this can be true, if people are as good and perfectly wise and uniform in their actions as angels; but they are not, not a one of them, but especially those who are drawn to making their money from money, and especially from speculation in the markets.  This type of activity attracts people from the tails of human behaviour, like most sources of wealth and power.

This assertion  of natural market efficiency sounds good, especially when it is delivered by academics in nice suits with lots of degrees and titles, backed by a multimillion dollar PR campaign that contains well crafted, thinly disguised appeals to more visceral emotions.   But it is a theory that is easily shown to be founded in fantasy to anyone who has driven on a crowded multi-lane highway in rush hour.

And a corollary to this is that the system grades or objectively and perfectly evaluates people on their merits. If one suffers some misfortune or fails to rise 'to the top' of the heap, then this is an objective judgement on them and their value, their character, their worthiness as a human being.   And some would say that this speaks to their status as a fully valued member of that society, to have rights and to vote, to receive food and vital medical attention, and to have families and to procreate.

Because the system is perfectly efficient and rewards the best, the most successful are sanctified by it. I am wealthy, therefore I am among the elect, whether it is marked by an aristocratic title or an enormous bank account.  I am above all the rest, and this proves my value, and provides all the things which are stuffed into my hollowed being.

One can certainly and legitimately use economics, among other things, to support their particular policy arguments to estimate effects. But the listeners should accept this with plenty of skepticism, because the proofs are largely based on statistics, or statistically based models, that are filled with often unspoken assumptions, questionable estimates, and too often critical omissions, both conscious or inadvertent.

But to take an economic model out of its place, and put it above the discussion as policy maker in the manner of a computing machine which spits out the ultimate solutions, to capitalize 'Market' as a type of god on earth, to put that false idol as an unfettered decision-making machine above the individuals of a society and the rule of law, is inhuman, and ultimately a tyranny of the anti-human.

Economics is a tool, in some implementations better than others, but overall not a particularly reliable one.  It is better in 'explaining' than predicting; its explanations are more often rationalizations founded in its malleability and lack of rigor, especially in its use of correlations and assumptions.

The elevation of macroeconomics today reminds one of the perversions of the discoveries in biology that led to the theories of eugenics and the race worship, the mythology of the blood that motivated much of the social thinking and many serious political movements at the beginnings of the twentieth century.   It was when the intelligentsia and the professions, the doctors and lawyers, threw in their lot with the financial and industrial elite that European society began to quickly fall apart.
"I believe that if a canvass of the entire civilized world were put to the vote in this matter, the proposition that it is desirable that the better sort of people should intermarry and have plentiful children, and that the inferior sort of people should abstain from multiplication, would be carried by an overwhelming majority...

Indeed, Mr. Galton has drawn up certain definite proposals. He has suggested that "noble families" should collect "fine specimens of humanity" around them, employing these fine specimens in menial occupations of a light and comfortable sort, that will leave a sufficient portion of their energies free for the multiplication of their superior type."

Source: H.G. Wells, Mankind in the Making
People forget that a whole range of intellectuals and popular thinkers, from George Bernard Shaw to H.G. Wells and a large measure of the economic, professional and political aristocracy of the day, embraced the notion of the natural superiority of certain human types, and the scientific necessity of encouraging their proliferation, and the dominance of the untermensch as not only their right but their obligation.

The medical profession disgraced itself, amongst the first of those in Germany, with their willingness and devotion to implement euthanasia based on these 'scientific principles.' And the elite in the West broadly looked at this movement with quiet compliance and even admiration for the will to make these 'hard decisions.'  It was only when the definition of the master race became increasingly narrow and their methods madly brutal that they recoiled in horror.  But by then it was too late, although many adherents to the basic principles remained sympathetic in England and America.

Science serves at its best, but it does not rule well, except to blind the heart and the mind to madness.

And one might look at these people from the past with revulsion and wonder, but the self-proclaimed ruling class of the West is doing the same thing today, largely by financial means for now. Their rhetoric and reasoning is filled with it, a sense of the obligation of their natural superiority. And if they steal from you, it is a privilege. And if a little of their spoils trickles down, you should be grateful.

There are plenty of believers in the ascendancy of a new master class, as long as they think they are a part of it. You may see them and their ideas on display this week from Brussels and Berlin, to Tampa and Jackson Hole. And they are not members of learning organizations, but protectors and promoters of the status quo.
"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."

Ryszard Kapuscinski
If one wishes to have an oligarchy or even a dictatorship based on power and unscrupulous behaviour in which the 'superior,' as one may choose to define them, use the weak as servants and prey, then decide to do so and say it, and hope the people will support it.

But it seems particularly hypocritical and cheap to set up a god of economic science which is elevated to speak these same words as an inspired dictum from above, but which is in reality a false idol carrying the calculated whisperings of its high priests, and then expect the people to bow to it forever without any eventual reaction. 

The Tyranny of Neoliberalism

Unapologetic in its implementation of austerity measures that cause massive amounts of human hardship and suffering, neoliberal capitalism consolidates class power on the backs of young people, workers, and others marginalized by class, race, and ethnicity. Neoliberal capitalism appears to no longer need the legitimacy garnered through its false claim to democratic ideals such as free speech, individual liberty, or justice—however tepid these appeals have always been(cf. Glenn Greenwald - Jesse)

In the absence of alternative social visions to market-driven values and the increasing separation of global corporate power from national politics, neoliberalism has wrested itself free of any regulatory controls while at the same time removing economics from any consideration of social costs, ethics, or social responsibility. Such a disposition is evident in the fact that neoliberalism's only imperatives are profits and growing investments in global power structures unmoored from any form of accountable, democratic governance.

The devastating fallout of neoliberal capitalism's reorganization of society, the destruction of communities and impoverishment of individuals and families, now becomes its most embraced mode of expression as it is championed, ironically, as the only viable route to economic stability.

In this widely accepted, yet dystopian world view, collective misfortune is no longer interpreted as a sign of failing governance or the tawdry willingness of politicians to serve corporate interests, but attributed to the character flaws of individuals and defined chiefly as a matter of personal responsibility. In fact, government-provided social protections are viewed as pathological. Matters of life and death are removed from traditional modes of democratic governance and made subject to the sovereignty of the market.  (Don't feed the 'losers' or the undesirables - isolate and then euthanise them, indirectly at first - Jesse)

In this new age of biocapital, or what Eric Cazdyn calls "bioeconomics," "all ideals are at the mercy of a larger economic logic" —one that unapologetically generates policies that "trample over millions of people if necessary." Neoliberalism's defining ideologies, values, and policies harness all institutions, social practices, and modes of thought to the demands of corporations and the needs of the warfare state. They are as narrowly self-serving as they are destructive.  (The individuals, even in their millions, must die if not for the good of the state or the race, then for the good of the market and corporate profits.  - Jesse)

As collective responsibility is privatized, politics loses its social and democratic character, and the formative culture necessary for the production of engaged critical agents is gravely undermined. An utterly reduced form of agency is now embodied in the figure of the isolated automaton, who is driven by self-interest and eschews any responsibility for the other.

As Stuart J. Murray points out, neoliberalism's totalizing discourse of privatization, commodification, deregulation, and hyper-individualism "co-opts and eviscerates the language of the common good." The ascendancy of neoliberal ideology also manifests in an ongoing assault on democratic public spheres, public goods, and any viable notion of equality and social justice.

As corporate power is consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, ideological and structural reforms are implemented to transfer wealth and income into the hands of a ruling financial and corporate elite.  This concentration of power is all the more alarming since both Canada and the United States have experienced unprecedented growth in wealth concentration and income inequality since the 1970s.

Henry Giroux, Days of Rage: The Quebec Student Protest Movement


17 March 2009

Senator Grassley: Throw AIG to the Wolves (and Ignore Us)


"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,
but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

Abraham Lincoln

But you can bloody well try.

Senator Grassley is a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committe. As such, he presided over a decade of erosion of safeguards and balance in our financial system.

He is also a member of a political party and a government that had the lead in ruining our country, undermining the Constitution, and allowing financial racketeers like AIG to flourish.

The fellows at AIG are indeed amoral pigs, and they make no pretentions to be otherwise, whereas Chuck Grassley and his ilk are venal hypocrites who are attempting to deflect attention from their own significant role in the current financial crisis, and a disastrous foreign policy conducted under false pretenses for the enrichment of private interests and corporations.

Those who take his pious pronouncements seriously are born to be shorn, over and over, again and again.

"I don't know whether the [$165 million in bonuses] is an issue as much as just the chutzpah of the people running AIG," Grassley said. "That they could thumb their nose at the taxpayers, it's more that.

"The attitude of these corporate executives and bank executives, and most of them are in New York, that somehow they're not responsible for their company going into the tank," he said.

"I suggest, you know, obviously maybe they ought to be removed, but I would suggest that the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them [is] if they would follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I'm sorry and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."